Pea Taste

The common field pea (Pisum sativum) is one of the first plants to be domesticated as a crop, dating back to the Neolithic agricultural revolution, 10,000 BCE. It is the same species that Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, used in his experiments when he discovered the laws of genetic inheritance.

Wrinkled peas are sweeter than round peas because they contain more sugar and less starch. The increase in sugar content leads to more water retention causing the peas to wrinkle when they dry. This case will examine the evolution of the wrinkled pea from its ancestral round pea shape.

In wrinkled peas there is an insertion mutation in the middle of the starch branching enzyme gene that renders the starch branching enzyme non-functional. This results in two different alleles: R and r.